LÊ THÚY
Exhibition: 13 Nov 2020 – 08 Jan 2021
Vin Gallery
No 11 Street 55, Thao Dien Ward, District 2, Ho Chi Minh city
I practice art by viewing my works as witnesses reflecting contemporary events through a personal lens full of intricacy and instability. I am constantly haunted by death and decay. How will people struggling through moments of life and death live? The struggle and seizing every opportunity to survive reflect the behaviors and origins of those individuals. From there, we can see the tragedies behind their lives.
The exhibition "The Silence is Deafening" is inspired by Rachel Carson's work "Silent Spring," about environmental devastation. I created the work during a time when darkness enveloped humanity: pandemics, wars, waves of people fleeing in search of safety and salvation, and deaths that cannot be resisted. People isolated, separated from loved ones, from society, from nature.
This is part of the installation “The silence is deafening”, inspired by Rachel Carson’s “The Silent Spring”, that I created during a time of darkness for humanity. Pandemic, war, poverty, oppression, displacement, dispossession and those seeking refuge. The deaths are of the defenseless, the powerless, the voiceless. Those of us who remain, live in social isolation, apart from loved ones, from nature. In this work, I collected old, damaged zithers that can no longer produce sound. Using lacquer painting technique to depict the natural landscapes that humanity are experiencing and their lonely struggle. The 39 zithers, once can sing their song, now arranged in rows as in a graveyard. The songs are now just a hint, an memory and the suffering is hidden in the silence.
Sometimes the silence is deafening, sometimes silence is the only voice we have.
























